Southampton’s first Social Media Surgery

I’ve been talking about creating a Social Media Surgery in Southampton for over a year now. I am so delighted that we are running our first session tomorrow at the Shooting Star pub.

We nearly made it last year, but sadly Aris (one of our students) graduated and left the area before we could get going. But the internet is a marvellous thing. Gavin Barker found details about the surgeries on the Our Society ning created by John Popham. John pointed him to Nick Booth at podnosh, and whilst putting two and two together suggested he talk to me too. Why? I’ve never been to a surgery. I have no direct experience of how they work. What I have done is been surrounded by the energy, enthusiasm and outputs since they began. I lived in Brum when they started and have spent hours discussing them with Nick. I think it is such a powerful idea. That folk who believe in social activism can volunteer to help other volunteers – and others from community organisations.

So we meet tomorrow. My huge thanks go to a few people, mostly to Gavin who has actually made this happen, to his contact Ben who has helped out with the venue, the venue, and then of course to the surgeons:

Standards nerves around rsvp’s means we have no idea if anyone will actually want any help. I have absolutely no doubt that the surgeons will be well able to amuse themselves sharing ideas, wowing each other with their work and getting to know other great people. Working on the strong assumption that people will turn up for help, Gavin has put together a useful crib sheets to give surgeons some ideas of the sort of solutions to offer surgeons. I’ve popped it into a post on this site here.

So, besides packing my dongles – you can never be too careful with wifi, remembering the camera, and charging up my laptop, I’m good to go. Wish us luck, and check back soon for a review of how it went.